Chapter 180 — The Power of the Eternal Sleeper

The rain poured down in torrents, lightning flashed and thunder roared, and a cold wind from the northern latitudes bore equally cold rain that lashed the spires of the castle. On this day, the most revered and eldest figures of the Kant Domain all dreamed the same dream unbidden. They dreamed that time had turned back thirty years, to another rain-drenched night, when their lord—young, strong, just and benevolent—was driving his carriage back toward the town. Not far ahead of the carriage rose the tall, imposing outer walls and high towers of Kant Castle, all of it shrouded in the mist thrown up by the rain and the curtain of night. The carriage raced along an endless road, as though trapped in a dream from which no one could wake.

Gao Yang walked through a deep, winding underground corridor that led to the castle's north tower. The soldiers who should have been guarding this passage lay sprawled across their posts. They still breathed, but their minds had been stripped from this world and drawn into a dream from which they could not wake. And at the same time, that dream had slipped the bonds of illusion, extending its tendrils into the real world and leaving its twisted projections upon a reality built of matter.

Moss crept over the mottled stone walls, peeling away in unbroken sheets to reveal the rotting, warped surfaces beneath. The logic of space and time within the corridor seemed to have lost all order in that moment; scenes from the dream and scenes from the real world played out in alternation at the same spot, and the magic-crystal lamps set into the walls flickered bright and dim in turn, casting a sinister, uncanny light upon the ancient oil paintings hung between them.

Boom!

A peal of thunder split the sky, and the underground corridor—which had a thick roof and was completely enclosed—was lit as bright as day by the lightning. Great cracks had appeared in the dark ceiling at some unknown hour, and between the riven stones the black, heavy sky was visible, the rain pouring down from it in torrents.

Gao Yang looked up. Through the ceiling of the corridor he could just make out that the entire upper half of the north tower had shattered and was floating in the sky. Those broken boulders and rooftops hung suspended in the rainy night as though gravity had abandoned them, spinning endlessly as the wild wind howled, scattering fragments of brick and stone with every collision.

He ignored it all and strode straight through the wind-torn corridor. The rain, uncertain between real and unreal, fell upon him—sometimes soaking him to the bone, sometimes vanishing altogether. Every observation yielded a different result.

The heavy oak door finally appeared before him, exactly as he had seen it in the dream. Gao Yang reached out, but before his fingers could touch the door, a shadow beside it suddenly writhed, and Amber's form coalesced from it. "Hey! Gao Yang, you're finally here!"

Gao Yang looked at Amber. "Did you find the lantern?"

"I only got this far. There's a very obvious surge of magic here, but no matter how hard I try, I just can't open this door!" Amber's tone was unusually dejected. She had clearly been full of confidence before, and for a master thief to be unable to open an antique wooden door was a severe blow to her pride.

"Can't open the door?" Gao Yang frowned. He glanced back the way he had come and found that the strange corridor had stabilized again; the broken walls and roof had sealed themselves once more. No wind or rain whipped through the passage now, no mottled moss, no crumbling bricks—and the oak door at the end of the corridor appeared solid and whole, old though it was, shut tight and fast.

Gao Yang turned to Amber. "While you were here, did you see the rain in the corridor?"

The half-elf looked blank. "Rain? How could it rain in a corridor?"

"So you're still inside the dream," Gao Yang said, understanding dawning. "The door in the dream is sealed shut. There's no way you could ever open it."

As he spoke, he looked at the oak door, then closed his eyes slightly and recalled in his mind the knowledge and power he had seized from the mental fragments of the Eternal Sleeper cultists. "Only by pushing this door open in the real world will you see what Xuanque Castle truly looks like."

He opened his eyes again. Cold wind and rain came howling through the corridor; the dark stone ceiling was riddled with a chain of gaping cracks; moss covered every wall; and the oak door had taken on the appearance of something ancient and mottled, long gone without repair.

A gentle push, and the door swung open.

Amber's eyes went wide the instant the oak door was pushed open: she finally saw what Gao Yang saw.

The half-elf lady cried out. "This—how did it fall into such ruin in here all of a sudden?!"

Gao Yang shook his head. "Because it hasn't been repaired in thirty years."

Then he took the lead, bringing Amber with him into the place that sustained the entire illusion.

The cellar space behind the oak door was still well preserved. The tower structure above blocked the rain pouring down from the sky, and the clamor from all around suddenly receded, as though the whole world had fallen quiet.

In the dim, hazy space, the lantern's light suddenly kindled. That warm, gentle radiance drove back the darkness, and within its glow a woman in a white gown took shape.

Behind her stood the very stone coffin Gao Yang had seen in the dream, and a host of stone pillars like those in the dream supported the entire cellar. Upon every pillar flickered countless faintly glowing runes.

"Lady Lilith Kant," Gao Yang said, watching her quietly. "It's time to wake from the dream."

"Your Grace, you should not have come to this place," Lilith said, her eyes full of sorrow. "If only you had pretended nothing had happened—how much better that would have been."

Gao Yang shook his head slightly. "But it has happened. You're drowning in this dream—you're only deceiving yourself. What the Eternal Sleepers gave you was never a cure. You must know that very well. They were only using your hand to draw power. What they gave you is nothing but an illusion."

"But I am willing to believe in it, so it is real!" Lilith Kant's emotions surged abruptly. "I was so close to succeeding—I have succeeded! So long as you don't come, so long as I keep hypnotizing myself, I will—I will—"

Gao Yang cut off the woman who had already descended into madness thirty years ago. "You will never succeed, because the dream power the Eternal Sleepers gave you has an innate flaw—the dreamweaver themselves is always awake! Even the Eternal Sleepers themselves cannot solve that innate flaw!"

Lilith Kant's expression froze in an instant. "Why... would you know that?"

"Because I devoured an Eternal Sleeper and took his knowledge and memories."

Lilith Kant's figure swayed uncontrollably. "So... that's how you perceived the truth of this place?"

"No," Gao Yang said, shaking his head. "I did gain that Eternal Sleeper's knowledge and memories, but when I first arrived, I was indeed deceived by this 'true dream.' It was only because you left so many flaws that I could piece the truth together bit by bit.

"There are many old books in Victor Kant's study. The newest of them was collected thirty years ago.

"As for the accident thirty years ago, the people of the domain and the people in the castle both show blurry memories of it—and when it comes to the matter of the 'viscountess,' the two groups hold completely different understandings.

"Viscount Kant appears to be the master of the whole castle, but whenever anything concerning you comes up, he shows obvious dullness and confusion. That's because you were afraid he would realize he was living in a dream, so you set tight mind-locks upon him.